


Christmas Wrapping

by orphan_account



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas alone, Leslie Knope-style. Featuring Ron Swanson, the entire Parks department, and a couple of bribed teachers from the recreation center.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas Wrapping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emilys_List](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilys_List/gifts).



"Yeah, it's fine, Mom." Leslie's nodding like her mother can see her, even though they're on the phone. Maybe they could see each other if she'd ever worked out that Skype thing, but no matter how many times April and Tom explained it, it just wouldn't stick. Either way, it's easier to sound sincere than look sincere, and her mother would know Leslie was lying if they were face-to-face. "I'm a grown woman -- it's not like I need to have Christmas with my mom! And I totally get that government doesn't ever shut down. See you on New Year's. Love you."

Leslie hangs up. She knows that as a successful career woman who's finally old enough to be the youngest ever President of the United States, she shouldn't be so down on the prospect of Christmas alone. After all, it's not her mother's fault that her office scheduled an emergency pow-wow over the holidays. She could visit her father in Florida instead, only she doesn't really have the vacation days to spare and besides, he's dead. So that's not really a fun Christmas either, though his headstone would look pretty awesome decorated in garland.

"Knock knock."

Leslie looks up and smiles when she sees Ann standing in her doorway, holding up Chinese takeout. "Ann!" she says, and gets up from her desk to take the bag out of Ann's hands. "I was just thinking about you."

"Were you?" Ann asks, grinning sweetly. "What about?"

"Oh, uh," Leslie says, floundering. "Yeah, no, actually I wasn't. I just got off the phone with my mom. She's going away for some conference over the weekend, so we can't have Christmas together."

Ann wrinkles her nose. "That sucks. I know it's your favorite holiday."

"Only after Pawnee's Founders Day." On June 13th, 1817, Pawnee was officially given its town charter and became a thriving metropolis in the great state of Indiana. Twelve people died that day. "But it's okay. Oh! Wait, I just had a great idea!"

"Great! Tell me," Ann says.

"We could have a girls-only Christmas, like Galentine's Day with more tinsel! Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Ann doesn't answer right away, which means it's either bad news or Ann is so touched that she's been reduced to speechlessness. "Oh," Ann says eventually. "Actually --" Bad news, then. "Actually the other nurses and I already rented a cabin in Swiss Valley for the weekend. They keep threatening to find me a rebound guy to get me over Mark. I told them I'm over him already, but they just said that's more reason to get me under someone else. I mean, I know that sounds pretty gross and any other time I'd _love_ to spend the holiday with you, but I already put in my deposit and it's non--"

"No, it's fine!" Leslie interrupts brightly. "I bet you guys will have a great time." They walk out of Leslie's office and set up lunch on the break table. "Besides," Leslie says, gesturing at everyone's desks, "I know all of these other great people who might be interested."

"Interested in what?" Tom says, snatching Leslie's fortune cookie. Leslie's pretty sure stealing fortune cookies is seven years bad luck. Or maybe that's just broken mirrors, but it can't be good for the karma or the chi or something.

"Leslie's mom won't be around for Christmas, and she's looking for other plans," Ann says.

"I'm sure you wouldn't know about being alone for the holidays," Leslie says, reaching over to pat Tom's hand. "Your people, I mean."

Tom laughs. "My people? I grew up in South Carolina and now I live in Indiana. I know all about Christmas, Leslie."

Leslie smiles beatifically. "It's so sweet of you to learn our customs," she says and doesn't understand why Tom rolls his eyes up into his head. "Well, would you want to come to Christmas at my place? Everyone here's invited," Leslie announces to the whole room.

"No can do," Tom says. "The Snakehole is having an all-night Ho-Ho- _Emphasis_ -On-The-Ho extravaganza, and there's no way I'm missing it."

"I would go," April pipes up from her desk, looking up from where she'd been engrossed in a conversation with Andy seconds earlier, "but I don't want to."

Andy laughs. "She can't because her family has this big thing every year and her parents want to meet me then and-- _ow!_ " He stops when April punches him hard in the arm. "We just can't," he finishes abruptly.

Leslie looks at Jerry, then away. "Donna?" she asks.

"Can't. I've got an all-expenses paid trip to Venezuela that I just can't turn down," Donna says, examining her nails. "I do _very_ well there."

"You can come to Muncie with me and my wife," Jerry says. "Our daughters aren't coming home this year, so there's plenty of room. You could be like our surrogate daughter!"

"Oh, thanks," Leslie says, exchanging a look with Tom, "but I just couldn't. Muncie is so far away."

"It's only an hour and a half away by car," Jerry says.

"Ninety whole minutes? In a _car_?" Leslie exclaims. "What are you, Superman?" She then changes the subject to Ann's new sweater and gets very interested in her food.

Anyway. Christmas alone. She can so do this.

+

She's got this! It's great! She is a strong, independent woman, the living embodiment of a Beyonce song (who's definitely spending Christmas with Jay-Z, but _whatever_ ). It's Christmas Eve and she's totally going to do this all by herself.

Leslie looks around her empty living room and chews her bottom lip, then grabs her cell phone, scrolling through the list until she finds Marlena Winkleman, the recreation center's "Decorating on a Dime" teacher.

"What can I do for you, Leslie?" Marlena asks, still sounding confused even after Leslie explains who she is. "Oh, God, you're not cutting my class, are you? I know the Parks department has been in trouble this year, but they _promised_ \-- and, and it's the day before Christmas and --"

"Whoa," Leslie says, holding out her phone and looking at it. "No, nothing like that. I just wondered. Uh, are you busy right now?"

"It's Christmas Eve," Marlena says, like that even answers Leslie's question.

"Are you --" Leslie grabs her wallet and counts the bills inside. "-- forty-eight dollars busy?"

Marlena makes a sound suspiciously like a laugh, but then starts coughing hard, so Leslie is probably wrong. "What's wrong?"

Leslie takes a deep breath. "Okay, so I usually spend Christmas at my mother's house, but she's going to a conference, so now I'm stuck alone for the holidays and my house is big and empty and I don't have a tree or even a _wreath_ and I could really use your decorating expertise. It would just be an hour, two at the most. Forty-eight whole dollars, Marlena," Leslie reminds her.

There's a long pause on the other end. "Give me fifteen minutes to get a beginner decoration kit together," Marlena finally says.

"Yes!" Leslie shouts. "This will be forty-eight dollars you won't regret making."

"Keep your money," Marlena says. "It's Christmas."

"Wow, thanks," Leslie says. Pawnee has the best citizens in the world.

Oh, hey, and now she has enough money to bribe -- er, pay -- the recreation center's "E-Z Meals Done Easy" teacher to make up Leslie's Christmas menu, too.

+

On Christmas, Leslie has everything under control. She's wearing her best red reindeer sweater, the one that she wears every Christmas while she opens presents, and the decorations look amazing, thanks to Marlena's help; there's a wreath on her door, a small tree propped up in one corner, and the halls are decked lovingly with colored lights and red bows. Even the food is going okay -- not only did she make two kinds of vegetables, but she also managed a roast chicken, rubbed down with butter and thyme, and an apple pie made mostly from scratch. That in-home menu-making class had been one of her better ideas, and she's really earned that whole pie. Leslie peeks in the oven, stirs her mashed potatoes and checks on her candied carrots, and makes sure the apple pie hasn't somehow walked away.

Wait. Chicken, potatoes, carrots, and pie. No cranberry sauce. _No cranberry sauce_ , not even the canned kind that slurps out onto the plate. Leslie suddenly feels tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.

"Christmas is _ruined_!" she wails to the heavens. "How can anyone have a decent Christmas without cranberry sauce, _seriously_?" She slumps against her kitchen counter and wonders if she should open up that box of wine she'd been saving for a special occasion. It's not like there's any point in going through with this farce of a holiday anymore -- and that's really it, isn't it? Leslie has been fooling herself into thinking what's going on here is somehow okay, when it's really the furthest thing from it. Christmas is a time for family, and what she's doing isn't a real holiday at all.

"No," Leslie says to herself. " _No_. That's stupid. Of course it's still Christmas! I am a strong, independent woman, and I can do this." What would Hillary Clinton say? She'd tell Leslie to suck it up, put on her best pantsuit, and get out to the grocery store to pick up some damned cranberries, that's what she'd say. Well, Leslie isn't going to put on her best pantsuit, but she can get to the grocery store and make this dinner succeed after all. After all, there's a grocery store that will be open, the one run by Pawnee's only Jewish family. Every year the Parks Department dedicates the first night of lighting the menorah to the Epstein family, and Leslie's sure that means a lot to them, even though she doesn't think she's ever actually seen them at the lighting ceremony. Anyway, she's going to do this. Leslie nods to herself, suddenly full of purpose and drive again.

+

The store is pretty empty, but just as Leslie turns down the canned goods aisle, she barrels headfirst into Ron Swanson, holding a grocery basket.

"Leslie," Ron says, unruffled, like she just popped into his office, not nearly shoved him into the asparagus display.

"Ron! What are you doing here? It's Christmas!"

Ron furrows his brow. "I don't celebrate Christmas anymore. It was Tammy's favorite holiday."

"Which Tammy?" Leslie asks, but Ron ignores her.

"I won't give that woman the satisfaction of celebrating in an expected way on a day that brings her so much pleasure. In fact, I call it Xmas." He chuckles to himself. " _Ex_ -mas, get it?"

Leslie sighs. "Yeah, I get it, Ron." She suddenly feels way less pathetic than she did a little while ago. "So, what do you have planned instead?"

"I plan on heating up a plate of stuffed clams, eating all of the clams, and then spending the remainder of my evening in my workshop, letting the varnish fumes lull me into a state of happiness."

"Oh. Uh, that sounds great. But," she says, grabbing a can of cranberry sauce from a shelf, "how about you come to dinner at my house instead?" Ron opens his mouth to turn her down, but she holds up her hand. "It's just me, which barely counts as a celebration at all. So what do you say, Ron? Christ-- er, Xmas at my house?"

Ron looks thoughtful. "Can I bring a plate a stuffed clams and consume them all by myself?"

"Sure," Leslie says generously. "I'm not really that into seafood."

+

Twenty minutes after Leslie gets home, Ron shows up on her doorstep, carrying a platter of stuffed clams as promised.

"How do you feel about roast chicken and mashed potatoes?" Leslie asks as she takes his coat.

Ron considers this. "Neutral," he says eventually. "Do you have an appetizer course?"

"Well, it was just supposed to be me, so I hadn't really--" Ron is looking at Leslie like she's sprouted a second head. She sighs. "No, Ron. No appetizers."

"Fine," Ron sighs. "Then I guess it's good I brought my own."

Despite the snafu with the appetizer course, dinner actually goes pretty well. Conversation is almost always easy between them, even when they're arguing over whether or not Mayor Gunderson is an idiot. They eat way more of the chicken and vegetables than Leslie could have eaten on her own and, even though she probably could have made a pretty good dent in the pie by herself, it's probably better that she didn't. Even the canned cranberry sauce works out fine, though Leslie will always think the homemade stuff is superior. When she says as much to Ron, he agrees. She likes it when they agree on stuff.

After they've cleared the dessert plates away -- and Ron insists on helping, even though Leslie invited him -- Leslie breaks out an actual bottle of red wine and coaxes Ron into a game of Pictionary. He's predictable with his clues, and Leslie gets suspiciously good at guessing whatever it is he's drawing.

"A deer," she guesses correctly.

"A gun," she guesses correctly.

"A deader deer than the last one." Leslie winces. "Seriously, Ron, that's a lot of blood for a drawing."

"Meat," she guesses correctly.

"Is that you re-caning a chair?" Leslie asks, telethon flashbacks making her shudder.

"Yes, but what kind of chair?" Ron prompts.

Leslie shakes her head. "I don't know," she says eventually.

"Ha!" Ron crows. "That's a point for me."

That makes the tally thirty to one because not only is Leslie great at guessing Ron's drawings, but he's terrible at guessing hers. Seriously, who can't get The Wizard of Oz, or Condoleezza Rice, or the sadly defeated Equal Rights Amendment? That last one, by the way, will be the first piece of legislation that Leslie will reintroduce to Congress once she's elected Commander in Chief.

Eventually Ron lights a fire in Leslie's fireplace and they settle on the sofa, drinking all of the wine and just talking. It's nice.

"Thank you for inviting me here," Ron says. "It was a better evening than I'd have expected."

Leslie grins. "I'm glad you were able to make it. I would have been okay alone today, but it's better that you're here. Christmas is for family."

"Xmas," Ron corrects her.

"Xmas," she agrees. They clink their glasses together in a toast. "Merry Xmas to all and to all a good night!"

Ron looks around. "Who are you talking to?"

"No one," Leslie says. "Never mind. Drink your wine."

Leslie Knope's Christmas alone: Mission Accomplished.


End file.
